Learnies 2020: Presentation of Awards

Greetings travelers, and welcome to the Troth Isle campus, the newest outlet for the magnificent learning, creative and scholarly activities, and community represented by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. You’ve made it all the way here, so it’s already clear you’re up for the big adventure that is the 2020 Learnie Awards, presented by the Faculty Development Team, Faculty Senate, Staff Council, eCampus, and UA Press. Troth Isle is based loosely on the Troth Yeddha’ campus of UAF, located on the traditional lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River, and we acknowledge the Alaska Native nations upon whose traditional lands we work and reside. Across the University of Alaska system, we cherish the land on which we live and depend, and we honor and respect the people who came before us, and who are still here. For this thrilling and groundbreaking second installment of the Learnie Awards, aka the Search for the Learnie, aka Return of the Learn, aka Learnies 2020: Feel the Learn, aka To Every Thing There is a Season (Learn Learn Learn), aka eKrampus, the horned and mischievous antihero who presides over the virtual quarantined Covid holiday season of 2020, I’m proud and eager to be your tour guide and host, IndiaNate Jones.

[audio: 01:43 - It belongs in a museum!] We are here to celebrate the massive potential, both realized and persistent, of open minded teaching and learning, in a time of transforming ideas, expectations, and tools. There is little about our world that feels the same compared to the first time these awards were presented, in April of 2019. But one thing has remained consistent–the remarkably resilient, creative, thoughtful, and innovative spirit centered at eCampus and across our many diverse units, which enable our educational communities at UAF and across interior Alaska to look forward into the future of higher ed with hope and excitement. So let’s begin! We have ten awards to present this evening, including four competitive categories of excellence, four unit-based sponsored recognitions, and two special Big-L Learnie awards, for particular and outstanding contributions to the world of innovative instruction. For the first of these two major awards, let’s head to the campfire, an appropriate gathering spot to recognize a truly collaborative approach to learning.

02:51 - Our first special Learnie Award for 2020 is presented for multimedia learning content with the most creative approach. And even though creativity isn’t always associated with eccentricity or irreverence, in this case it is. In fact, you might even consider this award the Weird Al Yankovic of the Learnies. But like, the Weird Al originals that he performs on the accordion, not just the familiar parodies. So y’know extra weird. The 2020 Learnie Award for Creative Approach goes to the 111X Hub team.

03:35 - Their instructional videos are a prime example of how collaborative effort and extemporaneous production can lead to creative results, when teamed with a skilled video editor who feels eager and free to embrace the fun and the weird. You need to talk about “Synergy.” Oh, I had that once. It was a real bad week. I had to get antibiotics and everything. No, no, in the context of a critique, synergy means the way that all the separate elements of a piece work together. Are they effective, or not? Next up is our Certificate of Excellence for Most Daring production, presented by UAF Faculty Senate’s Faculty Development, Assessment, and Improvement Committee. This year’s recipient is UAF Institute of Arctic Biology professor Mark Lindberg, for his Wildlife 101 video Moose Harvest Lab. Lindberg’s unflinching work to bring practical, useful content from the field into accessible contexts demonstrates a commitment to innovation and daring in bringing content to students.

04:46 - Welcome to the production studio, where our next two awards are presented by eCampus and by eCampus’s highly valued student employees. eCampus is proud to present their own Learnies Certificate of Excellence, in Innovative Media. This award goes to Diana Wolf, also of IAB, for her series of hands-on instructional guidance screencasts, based on the novel and interactive PlayPosit video learning platform. Diana Wolf’s Biology 360, Principles of Genetics, covers enough material for two classes. When Diana moved the class online for the first time in Spring of 2020, she created a plethora of instructional videos to explain concepts.

05:41 - To maintain engagement and give learners guided feedback, she enhanced each of these videos using the interactive video platform PlayPosit. This gave students highly contextualized knowledge checks within each video to ensure that they moved on with a grasp of the concepts just introduced. Congratulations also to IAB’s Diane Wagner and Knut Kielland, for their on-site video presentation about the ecological concepts of disturbance and succession. For more about this winning video, here are the student workers who selected it as the recipient of their own special Certificate of Excellence. I’m Mika, one of eCampus’ media producers.

06:23 - For the 2020 Learnies Student Choice Award, we’ve chosen a video which accomplishes excellence in educational media production. This video is technically exceptional, featuring beautiful drone shots, a great outdoor location on the Tanana River, and well-planned and executed presentations. It’s dynamic and engaging, and entirely entertaining as it is educational. This video showcases both what eCampus and on-camera talent can do. The Succession video not only illustrates this idea but raises the bar to new heights to enhance the total educational experience. And, it’s just plain cool.

07:06 - We want to show you the best so you too will be inspired to create great things and be inspired to work with the fine people at eCampus who can help bring your ideas to even greater heights. Welcome to Gruening 301! I’m thankful today to finally not be wearing a mask inside for once, not because I’m not a real person, but because the rest of the people here are animals, and the reports of Covid-19 passing between living, breathing animals and humans are infrequent and suspect. We’re delighted this year to have partnered with the Fairbanks North Star School District to recognize some of the magnificent and responsive innovations that K12 instructors have adapted for their own students and schools. Particular recognition across FNSB goes to Anne Kettle, Kristin Presler, Norm Davis, and Carol Smallwood at University Park Elementary, and to Sarah Gillam, Principal at West Valley High School. Congrats everyone! Let’s have a look at the great work these educators did in a time of disruption.

08:14 - Would you rather have a car that can fly or a car that can drive underwater? I wanna see the birds so I will choose the car that can fly. …That can fly because I want to beat the traffic. You know? Hey, trucks, hogging up the road? Well guess what, just flying! Fred Meyer or Safeway? Ooh, that’s a tough one. Safeway. Question #2. Where did you go to high school. Bonus for knowing the mascot. I went to North Pole High School. I was a Patriot. With the second of our two major Learnies trophies, we recognize Mark Conde, physics professor at UAF, with distinction for Continuity of Instruction. 2020 has been a year like no other, with more and bigger challenges for higher education than at any other time in living memory. Covid, economic and political volatility, long-term and market disruptions to educational models everywhere, murder hornets–did you know the Pentagon disclosed in April an ongoing thirteen-year investigation into repeated sightings and recordings of UFOs by Navy fighter pilots, and it barely registered? Not now, aliens! In the face of all this, Dr.

Mark Conde 09:42 - responded patiently and with his own particular skillset. Mark built a multi-camera recording studio in his lab space that allows him to switch between a computer presentation, a whiteboard, and an overhead view. Mark self-describes himself as someone who likes to tinker with gadgets and he puts this interest to use in creating a solution for bringing students into his lab space from a distance. So this is camera 4, and now this is the camera in the room showing the actual nature of the setup. So what I’ve got, the main presentation camera, the camera that I speak to when I want to talk to the students is this one here. There’s another camera overhead there.

10:18 - That’s the camera that’s looking down on the whiteboard. We can switch between - here is the overhead camera. Greetings, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Mark Conde here from the Geophysical Institute and the CNSM. And I’m here to accept this Learnie Award.

10:35 - Which has been offered in recognition of some work that myself and my partner Jana Canary did to put together a video studio that we’ve been using to present classes in the most engaging way that we can during the Fall of 2020. As you can see, I have this ability, a nice camera, to show a speaker in front of an interesting background, we can also present computer slides. And in fact we can show videos in the computer slides. And present as a small person down in the bottom to not distract from the slides. We also have a whiteboard here that we can write on in realtime. To make some instructional content as we need it there. It works really well. I think the students are enjoying it. Some of our students in the Geophysical Institute have reproduced this capability which is now being used for recording AGU talks for the AGU conference coming up for faculty and staff. It’s working really well. Jana and I have had a lot of fun using this. I think the student feedback has been very positive and so I hope other people with their efforts to get their teaching for the fall have been doing just as well as we have been. For our final four prizes, we’ve collected many worthy nominees for the 2020 Learnie Awards into four categories common across some of the very best new media content produced at UAF this year.

12:14 - One of my favorite unique places on campus is the artists’ hangout on the northwest edge of the UAF Experimental Farm, where the wood-fired anagama ceramics kiln is located, as well as Jim Brashear and company’s killer pizza oven. So here we are to present the award for Use of Animation; nominees are “The Learning Inside Outside Network,” by Naomi Hutchquist of Alaska EPSCoR, “The 4 H’s” for Salmon, People, and Place by Peter Westley on edX, animated by Mika McCrary, “UAF Felt Landscape of Metaphor” for the Faculty Senate Diversity Committee and based on new faculty orientation, animated by Eric Lonn and Mika McCrary, and “Water is Like Learning: A Beaver Metaphor,” also animated by Mika McCrary. And the Use of Animation Learnies Certificate of Excellence goes to Naomi Hutchquist, for “Learning Inside Outside Network.” This video is not only creative, but efficient. Naomi made this in only a few days. This was a close contest, and Mika McCrary is definitely in runner up status for her rapid design and animation of A Beaver Metaphor in just a few days.

13:39 - Next up is our Get Outside Award. Nominees include “The McKinley Fire” by Alaska EPSCoR, featuring on-the-ground interviews and aerial footage. “Hydrokinetics Fisheries” by the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (or ACEP), showing research in rural Alaska with compelling landscape footage. “Dog Mushing 101” by UAF anthropology professor Patrick Plattet, and Robin Shoaps, made for Anthropology F270, virtual field school. “Salmon Field Trip on Periscope” by UAF Fisheries and Ocean Sciences professor Peter Westley.

14:32 - And the Get Outside Learnies Certificate of Excellence goes to ACEP, “Hydrokinetics Fisheries.” This was a collaboration between ACEP and College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences’ Andy Seitz, and the Igiugig City Council. Let’s head back to the studio for the final two awards! Some of the most important and compelling video content we have comes in the form of interpersonal discussion and interviews. In the Interview Techniques category, our nominees are “Using Humor and Props to Engage Students,” by Communication and Journalism professor Rob Prince “Arctic Security Fundamentals on edX” by School of Management professor Troy Bouffard Interviews by Mark Young of the UAF Community and Technical College INTERVIEWS FOR ONE HEALTH: A Ten Thousand Year-Old View of the Future on edX And the Interview Techniques Learnies Certificate of Excellence goes to Troy Bouffard for “Arctic Security Fundamentals on EdX”. Troy Bouffard overcame pandemic restrictions and distance to interview ten experts on Arctic Security.

15:53 - Troy framed his questions in a manner that the experts alone were highlighted in the final product. For the category of Effective Instructional Video, our nominees are “History of World Art - Jewish Art” by Zoe Marie Jones for her ART F261 Course. “Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program” Videos by Lesley Jones and UAF Cooperative Extension Remote Sensing of Wildfires” by Dr. Santosh Panda, Anushree Badola, and Christopher Smith for their course on edX. and “The Unsafety Lab” by Chemistry and Biochemistry Laboratory Coordinator and Safety Officer Emily Reiter for online Chemistry lab courses.

16:49 - This final and particularly resonant award of the night goes to Emily Reiter, for the “The Unsafety Lab.” Congratulations to all our amazing award winners and nominees, and thank you to everyone for tuning in. You make us all proud and grateful to work with, and rely on, our amazing community of educators here at UAF. Have a terrific night, and Happy Thanksgiving Week. .